Nature Reserve. This remains closed while the birds are nesting, except for guided bird-watching walks. The next is on Sat 8 June leaving the village hall at 0930 lasting 1.5 to 2 hours.

Reserve your place by emailing the secretary (address below). There are only three places left. During the first two walks, we have seen or heard 28 species of birds, thanks to the help of Martin Latham.

Repair café, Sun 30 June, 2 to 4pm, Village Hall Bring your household items including clothing, electrical, and gardening articles for mending, tools for sharpening and bikes for fixing for free. Refreshments available. Donations welcome to cover costs. Thanks to all our volunteers who come to do the fixing!

If you want to know more about Sustainable Blewbury and become a supporter who receive occasional newsletters, email secretary@sustainable-blewbury.org.uk

BlewShed products: have been very popular this month and sales of garden trugs in particular have been booming at Savages. One of our range, a horseshoe handled wooden tray, was even posted on Blewbury Village Society’s FaceBook page by its proud new owner! As with all our products this was made from useful and valuable materials that would otherwise have been binned or burned. The horseshoes were salvaged from our village farrier’s skip and most of the wood from broken or non-returnable pallets from Savages or local building projects. With a bit of work such items can be repurposed for useful and attractive items. If any of you have been disappointed because items have sold out at Savages, please be patient as we are currently catching up with demand and you can always place an order for them either with Savages or with BlewShed when we are open.

DIY for beginners: Our next DIY workshops are in planning and will focus on helping DIY beginners with their individual projects using techniques they learned over the winter. More experienced members have been using the workshop facilities for progressing their own projects of varying levels of ambition ranging from a replica ‘Studley’ tool chest, making replacement boat parts, designing electronic measuring devices, renovation of a late grandfather’s tool chest, restoration of antique tools, carving traditional wooden spoons and many other items.

Community Projects:  Recently BlewShed made and fitted a replacement turned wooden handle for the Blewbury Allotments Association garden roller, and several new projects are currently being planned, more news later.

Meetings: Members enjoyed a convivial social evening at the Blueberry and those who attended agreed this should be repeated more often. Watch this space. The next BlewShed club night will be Tuesday 11th June, 7.30pm at BlewShed, when member Mike Wrottesley will give a talk on rocking horses. All welcome.

BlewShed opening times and membership: Tuesday, Friday and Saturday afternoons 1.30-4.00 pm and Thursday afternoons 2.00-4pm for electronics, non-dusty work and a chat. BlewShed annual membership subs are £25 for individuals, or £37.50 for a family. This includes expert advice from members and use of a very well-equipped metal-working, woodworking and electronics workshop. BlewShed is here to help members and DIY beginners learn various woodwork, metal-work and other practical techniques, so come along and acquire some new skills, or just have a cuppa and chat. Everyone is welcome to club night meetings on the second Tuesday of the month.

Mike Wrottesley, BlewShed secretary      https://blewshed.home.blog/news/

CROQUET CLUB – OPEN EVENINGS

Have YOU ever thought about having a go at croquet? Whether you want a social afternoon with friends, or are looking for a new competitive sport, our club caters for everyone from complete beginners to elite players. Blewbury’s courts are rated amongst the best in the country, as evidenced by the England internationals who’ve trained here. But we’re first and foremost a village resource, and would love to get more Blewburians involved.

We’re currently offering free open evenings, on Mondays (5:00-6:30 pm) from now until 1st July, for any adults (or accompanied teens) who want to give it a go. Please wear flat-soled shoes (e.g. trainers), but otherwise just turn up as you are and we can supply all the equipment you need.

If you want to take it further, full membership costs £200 a year (April-March). But we offer family discounts and, in this sport, anyone under 25 is classed as “junior” and only pays £40.

There’s a lot more about the club on our website, but feel free to give me a call if you’ve any queries.

David Long (07484 360169) secretary@blewburycroquetclub.org.uk

The Chairman represented the Club at the Annual Parish Meeting on 15th May and gave a short report on the Club’s activities.

Tuesday evening face-to-Face sessions will continue in the Vale Room through June. Our online Realbridge sessions will be held on Thursday evenings at 7pm on June 6th and 20th. We will join the Wantage Bridge Club sessions on the 13th and 27th. Attendance at our weekly online Funbridge sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays seems to be dwindling.  Michael Allen  851870

New members and supporters welcome

As we (hopefully) start to bid adieu to a long, wet winter and the daffodils start swaying in the spring breeze, attention drifts to warmer months and the bucolic sound of leather on willow. Blewbury Cricket Club is always looking for new members and passionate supporters. We market ourselves as a club for all ages and abilities with everyone welcome.

Since Covid lockdown where outdoor sports were permitted, we have seen somewhat of a renaissance of cricket in the village. We are a club of about 50 members with fixtures taking place from mid-May to the end of August. We tend to host three different types of matches throughout the season. Midweek games are generally 20 overs and played against local opposition or indeed scratch teams. They start at 6pm and are normally finished by 9pm; they tend to take place on Tuesday and sometimes Wednesday and Thursdays. On Fridays we have an interclub turn-up-and-play match with two teams (The Badgers and The Roosters) playing a T20 against each other. These are fun for all the family with a well stocked bar and non-cricketers watching or indeed playing around the outfield. Finally we hold a few Sunday 40-over games against local opposition for those who like to take their cricket slightly more seriously. There is a pay bar at the ground and changing/toilet facilities. Thanks to the invaluable support of BlewShed we have had our gang mowers serviced which will no doubt improve the quality of the outfield. In addition this season a local team called The Berkshire Royals will be using our pitch every Saturday and may well be looking for some eager cricketers to play for one of their teams. If you are interested in becoming a member or indeed just simply coming up to watch, contact details for some of the committee members are below as are the links to join the club WhatsApp group and the new club website (thanks to Adam Stockley). Fixtures will appear on the club website and WhatsApp group shortly. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Parish Council for their ongoing support of the cricket club.

Contact details: Rob Southwell-Sander (Club Captain) rsouthwellsander(at)yahoo.co.uk; Ian Bacon (Chairman) ian.bacon(at)blewburton.com; James Barratt (Secretary) james(at)ashbrooklets.co.uk; Club website: https://www.blewburycricketclub.co.uk/; Whatsapp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Ini9dXhahm48Gb0Z8LRLgS

So you’re interested in Shakespeare? (Well, the picture obviously caught your attention…) Or maybe, ever since school, you hate him and all his works? Fair enough. What I want to know is: if you love him, would you welcome an opportunity to get to know him better? And if you hate him, would you be willing to give him one more try? I only ask because I’m kind of astonished at the number of people who turn up for my talks on the various Shakespeare plays that the Players have put on over the years, and I’m wondering whether there’s an appetite for some kind of local Shakespeare group that might take things to the next level.

What is the next level? You tell me. It could be:

• Talks on Shakespeare – any aspect you like. (That would probably mean more of me to start with, but if we can get some momentum going it might also mean actual professional scholars/actors/directors who can be persuaded to do something not-too-academic for the price of a nice meal.)
• Group trips to Stratford to see shows or visit the houses where Shakespeare and his family lived
• Similar trips to London for theatres and historic Shakespearean locations
• Events focusing on current GCSE/A level set texts
• Shakespeare-themed, sack-fuelled annual dinners
• All or none of the above

If this sounds in any way your cup of tea, please call me on 851055 or email me at editor@blewbury.co.uk with (preferably) some specific thing you’d like to see or hear or do, or just a general ‘might be interested’. Shakespeare, to me, is an inexhaustible mine of miracles and wonder, so it would be good to find people who might want to do some more digging!  Thanks for reading.  Chris Whatmore

The Vale of the White Horse Active Communities team will be at Ticker’s Folly Field on Wednesday 31^st May from 2-4 pm to run a multi-sports activities event at our new Outdoor Table Tennis Table.

This Active Communities team, who helped us acquire the new outdoor table tennis table, are keen to promote its use. They will organise a range of fun activities suitable for all ages  and abilities. There will free bats and balls to be won and all sorts of other surprises in the half-term sunshine. Do come along in comfortable shoes ready to have fun, be active and win prizes.

In the meantime the Blewbury Table Tennis Club welcomes new participants of all ages and abilities at our weekly Blewbury Village Hall sessions every Tuesday from 5:00 – 6:30pm.  Roger Murphy, Chair of the Blewbury Table Tennis Club

Just in the last few days our brand new top quality outdoor table tennis table has been delivered, constructed and installed on Tickers Folly Field. Huge thanks to the District Council, who gave it to us, to the Parish Council, who brokered the deal, and to all who helped in different ways with this exciting venture – especially Mark Shayler, who did the groundwork and put in the concrete base and playing area.

The table is there now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for anyone to go to play on it (although we don’t yet have floodlights installed!). Some tips for first time users are to take a cloth or old towel with you to wipe down the surface as it often gets wet or slightly muddy overnight. Also take your own bats and balls, as there is nowhere there where we can store them. And finally try to choose a time when the wind isn’t too strong! Table tennis is fine as an outdoor game if the conditions are still, but if the wind is strong it can be very difficult to have a good game.

On Saturday April 1^st and 8^th from 2-3pm members of the Blewbury Table Tennis Club will be up there with bats, balls, and coaching advice (if needed), so why not come up and have a go on Blewbury’s new play area? Also if you want to play on our four fabulous indoor tables do join us for our regular Blewbury Table Tennis Club sessions in Blewbury Village Hall every Tuesday from 5-6pm. All standards and ages welcome.

Roger Murphy, Chair, Blewbury Table Tennis Club

Nature reserve – Sustainable Blewbury’s negotiations with Thames Water to convert the old sewage works site, at the end of the concrete path going north from the Village Hall, to a nature reserve have progressed well and we are now expecting work to commence in autumn. This first stage will be carried out by Thames Water contractors and when the work is complete, hopefully in early spring, we will be calling for volunteers to help manage the site. Before then we plan a full project launch with a presentation of what to expect on completion.

Woodland – On the way to that site is the field that was once the Quaker burial ground. The owner, in an act of very great generosity, is planning that SB should take it over to create a woodland for the benefit of the village and to assist the national campaign to increase tree cover in the fight against climate change. This project will need a lot of input from the village in terms of both hard physical labour and financial support. Planning is well underway and we hope to present our ideas in September.   John Ogden, Chair, Sustainable Blewbury